Congratulations & RAK Winner

Today is Eric's (my brother) birthday who lives in Holland. From across the miles I would like to wish you a very happy birthday. I'll have a piece of that cheesecake you made too! Have a great day. Last week I made this card for him, hopefully it will be there in time.



Materials used: Cardstock Bazzill, PP Chatterbox, Chipboard letter Heidi Swapp, Doodlebug paperfrills, 'birthday' stamp Stampin'Up.

Renee just pick the lucky winner of the Autumn Leaves clear stamp set. The winner is:



Congratulations Hester, please e-mail me (via the link on my blog) your address and I will send it off to you.

As promised I would do another little RAK. This one is more for inspiration. It's a copy of the latest issue of Simple Scapbooks Magazine. So, if you haven't already got a copy and you would like to, then please leave a message on this blog entry by next Friday and Renee will pick another winner.

Boys Day Out

Today I created a LO with the August Boxx of Scraps from Scrapboxx. The papers are totally not my style, but I did have the perfect picture to go with it. With the kits I always try to use as much from the kit and limit using things from my own stash. But sometimes I wish it included some ribbons or buttons for some more dimension.





Materials used: Bazzill Cardstock, Three Bugs in a Rug PP, Brads and Design Board, Carolee's Creations Blue Foam Letters, Tulip Puffy Paint, Autumn Leaves Journaling Stamp, Zig Marker, McGill Tab Punch, date stamp.

Have you left your comment yet on Tuesday's blog entry to be in it to win the Autumn Leaves clear stamp set?

Another Father's Day Sneak

I finished my father's day project. I know it's only 5 days until Father's Day, but I wanted to show you another sneak from the inside. Curious yet? Sunday I shall reveal all. Also, don't forget to leave a comment on this thread to be in it to win the Autumn Leaves clear stamps.

Sketch This Card

This afternoon I created a card for Sketch This: Cards! 24. They used this sketch also for their contest in July. I already liked it then, but didn't do anything with it. This time I decided to take on the challenge:





Materials used: Bazzill Bling Cardstock, Chatterbox PP, SEI Button, Versacolor Pinecone ink, Prima Flowers, bling ?, Large flowers Heidi Swapp & Bazzill, 'celebrate' stamp Stampin'Up, tag.

Last night I created another card for Evelyn who will be turning 7 at the beginning of September. This is a total scraplift of a garden seed on 2Peas.



Materials used: Bazzill Bling carstock & DCWV (circle), Amy Butler and Creative Imaginations PP, Heidi Swapp Ghost Butterfly, Basic Grey Rub-ons, Buttons ?, Ribbons ?, machine sewing, 'happy birthday' stamp Stampin'Up.

Hip Hip Hooray! & RAK

Today our eldest daughter Rebecca is turning 9! It's really hard to believe that I've already been nurturing her for 9 years. But I'm pleased to see that she is growing into someone amazing. Happy Birthday, Girl!
Rebecca wanted to have a card with butterflies, which she hinted to me after she saw the other cards I had made. So, butterflies it is:



Materials used: Bazzill Cardstock, Hero Arts Butterfly stamps, Doodlebug flowers, Stampin'Up 'happy birthday' stamp, Tulip Puffy Paint, Versacolor Ink, Staz'On ink, circle punch and tag.

As we are celebrating today, I decided it is also time to give something to one of my blog visitors. Leave a comment on this thread and I'll choose a winner on Friday, when it's my brother's birthday. The lucky winner will receive this stamp set from Autumn Leaves:



P.S. I'll do another little RAK on Friday.

My Caardvark Price

Today I received my price from The Angel Company that sponsored the 1-2-3 Challenge at Caardvarks. I could choose from 4 different stamp sets, and I chose this one:



Also, this afternoon we've been busy making cupcakes for Rebecca to hand-out to her fellow classmates tomorrow, as she will be celebrating her 9th birthday. I must say making cupcakes isn't my strongest asset, but I'm sure it will put a smile on the kids faces.

Poppy Ink June Kit

This morning we went with the whole family to Ruben's soccer practice. The boys have been going together (David is actually a coach) every Saturday morning, but today was the last one and I obviously needed to record this on camera. Here are two of my favourites:






This afternoon I wanted to scrap a 12x12" LO and decided to grab whatever was on top in my kit box to use for the LO. It happened to be Poppy Ink's June Kit Tutu . I received three consecutive months from their monthly kit through Blue Bazaar, but I wasn't thrilled with them. But I decided to use it and try to only use the kit. I ended up adding a few things that weren't in the kit. I must say, this LO definitely took me out of my comfort zone. I'd would like to know what you think of it.





Materials used besides the June Poppy Ink Kit: Heidi Swapp date stamp, Autumn Leaves Stamp 'Prepare to be amazed', Staz'On Black Ink.

More Cards

Today I made 4 cards, inspired by all the lovely cards Nancy creates. Thank you for the inspiration. I can only show you two, as the other ones are for Rebecca, our eldest, who will be turning 9 on Tuesday and my brother, who is celebrating his birthday next Friday. I will reveal those respectively on Tuesday and Friday!

This card I made for one of my Dutch friends, Jacqueline, who had an operation earlier this week. I hope you're doing well.



Materials used: Bazzill Cardstock, Chatterbox PPs, Prima Flowers, Brads, Tulip Puffy Paint, staples, Doodlebug Paper frills, Scenic Route Chipboard letters.

And the last one is for Dave & Gina in the UK, who will be celebrating their 10th anniversary next week.



Materials used: Cardstock Bazill, Basic Grey, Scenic Route and Sassafraslass PPs, Autumn Leaves stamp, 'happy togehter' Stampin'Up stamps, Doodlebug frills, staples, EK Succes Heart Punch, chipboard and Tulip White Puffy Paint

Multi-Tasking

Right now I'm running a few projects parallel to each other. I haven't done anymore on my handbag, but I have chosen pictures and for the most part decided how to do each page lay-out. The other thing I'm working on is for Father's Day. We had already started on something, but the kids had taken over project and I wasn't pleased with how it was turning out. Today I started from scratch, with different more brightly coloured papers. I'd love to show you the whole front, but I'm not sure whether hubby will read this. Unfortunately it will have to be sneak for now. I will reveal the lot after Father's Day which is September 2nd.

Caardvarks Micro Challenge - Lift It!

For Caardvarks Micro Challenge I lifted this card by Lauren:



I chose this card, because I love the rub-ons on the sheer flowers. This is my interpretation:

Dandelion

I haven't been able to do any scrapbooking this weekend, but I'll have to get busy this week to meet some goals. However, I did take a very beautiful picture today of a dandelion that I wanted to share with you to brighten your Sunday. I've only cropped the picture, but haven't adjusted any colour. The picture was taken with my 60mm lens at f/5.6 in.

Two for Two

Well, it seems the stars must be right for me at the moment. Remember this card. I actually won the challenge. That's two winners in two days. The prize at Caardvarks is sponsored by The Angel Company and apparently the prize will smell like rubber. This is what they said: Lisette's card meets the challenge perfectly, it's well-balanced, simple, clean and crisp. Great job!

By the way the prize for the winning LO at Cocoa Daisy is a $15 voucher.

Today I had part 2 of my Photoshop Course. Today we learned how to convert images to black and white. And I can tell you that isn't just two clicks of a button. If anyone is interested how to do it, I'll post the steps on how to achieve the best result. We also learned about the healing/patch tool and how to extract parts of a picture. Lots of new information for me that's for sure.

A Winner

Remember this LO. Well, I submitted it for the Pencil Lines sketch challenge #42, but also I submitted it to Cocao Daisy's gallery for the July Design Contest as I used their July kit to create the LO. This afternoon I was browsing through Cocoa's website to see it anything had been announced yet, when at the same time I received their newsletter announcing the Gallery Winners. And guess what, Daisy Diva Lisa Pace chose my LO as one of the three winners. Woohoo!! Congratulations also to Kathi and Patrice.

Here's what she said about each winning LO:

Sneak Peek Handbag Kit

Yesterday I went to a LSS and (obviously) spent way too much money. One of my purchases was a handbag kit with a matching mini album that goes inside. With the exception of the handle, I've finished the bag. I'm using Dutch Girl papers from Cosmo Cricket that I've already had for a while, but didn't have a purpose for yet. Here's a few sneaks...

Card

Currently I've got a lot of creativity in my head, but I'm not actually creating much. I did make one card yesterday. It's quite a simple design. I will have to start making some things as Rebecca's birthday and Father's Day are coming up.



Products uses: Cardstock Bazzill, PP Scenic Route and Sassafraslass, machine stitching, circle punch, Tulip Puffy Paint, Happy Anniversary stamp Stampit, Hearts Sizzix Die Cut, Embossing Quickutz, Ink Staz'On.

Colour Correction Explained

Well, Eric, my brother was wondering how I've been taught to do a colour correction wihtin Photoshop. Firstly I must say we received a seven page hand-out explaining it all. Not that you need huge amounts of time to achieve it, but there is several ways around to do it with the same end result. I'll demonstrate with curves how it's done with this picture of Rebecca:



You need to identify the shadows and highlights in you picture. Use image>adjust>threshold to do this. When you move the slider all the way to the left in threshold the whole picture will turn white. When you slowly move it back in shadows will start to appear. That's the area that you want to 'tag' for your shadows. Move the slider to the right and the whole picture will turn black. When you slowly move it back in you will start to see highlights. This is the area you want to 'tag' for your highlights.






Use colour sampler tool to 'tag' the shadows and highlights. When you tag you shadows look for consistent RGB values. You can find this in the info folder of the navigator menu on the right hand side of your screen





Use levels or curves to optimise the RGB values in the shadows and highlights. The RGB value for black is 0,0,0 and for white it is 255,255,255. To set the shadows value double click set black point in the curves menu. Enter the average RGB value of your tagged shadow (e.g. 20,22,20 becomes avg. 21). Always do the shadows first and then the highlights.








If needed you can manually adjust the curve to lighten the picture all together.



Here's before and after:



If you have Photoshop you might want to give it a try yourself.

Colour by Numbers

Today and next Saturday I'm doing a Photoshop course for Photographers. One of the things we learned was how to correct the colour of pictures. This wasn't done by eyesight but by numbers. The beauty of doing it by numbers, is that the colour balance is always correct. Here's one of my own picture I corrected this evening. When David took the picture the white balance was not set to auto and the picture came out too blue. But with my new knowledge I was able to correct it. I wish I'd known this a lot sooner. We also touched on dodging and burning and blending.

Original:


After colour correction:

Cuddle

Yesterday I made this LO of Renee and her cuddles. I wanted to put some journaling on the LO, but couldn't really find a good place to put it. After a bit of thinking I decided to do something revolutionary. Or at least I've never seen it on any LO before. I was a bit nervous about it though as I needed to cut a circle into my cardstock. I practiced on a piece of scrap first. It might not be all that practical when it's in an album, but life isn't only about practicality, right?. Here's what I did.





Products used: Bazzill Cardstock, PP Chatterbox and Creative Imaginations, Flowers Michael Miller, Scalloped Journaling Spots Jenni Bowlin, Ribbon Maya Road and Basic Grey, Stamps Autumn Leaves, White Paint Making Memories, Foam Thickers American Crafts, white pen.

I also got tagged by Nancy. Thanks Nancy, I'm honoured. I'm afraid I wouldn't know of five others to pass it onto, but I will tag Ingrid and Paula.

Caardvarks Challenge 1-2-3

Last night I created a card for the Caardvarks Challenge 1-2-3. All products used came from the Seeds kit I received from Scrummy Stash Café.



Products used: Carstock & Cha Ching Brad Bazill (not from kit), PP & Tag Collage Press, 'Happy Birthday' Inkster Font, Flowers ?, Stamp Fontwerks (not from kit).